A Quick Look Back

I looked back through my training log and my marathon splits. Obviously, I overestimated my ability by about ten minutes. However, this is one of the aspects I find alluring about marathoning; until I gain more experience, I won't know the maximum pace I can maintain for the entire race. With shorter race distances, I can push the pace over the race distance in training to get a feel for my race capabilities, yet still adequately recover within a few days. During the marathon evolution, I get one shot – race day. I've been in email contact with one of my friends since the marathon. He is a 2:40ish marathoner and says that a good rule of thumb is to take a recent half-marathon time, double it and add ten minutes to get a realistic marathon prediction. That rule applies well to me. About two weeks prior to Baltimore, I ran a half-marathon training run in 1:40. Doubling that and adding ten minutes is 3:30, while my actual time was 3:32.

I was pretty sore on Sunday, although I was still able to move around and take care of some work in the yard. I was less sore yesterday and feeling better today. This is the first time this year that I have taken three consecutive days off from running. I am going to go for a short and easy run tomorrow to test drive the legs.